For the first time in my life, I’m in the market for a personal MBP. I had to get my ancient MBP for work replaced last week and they sent me one of the new 14" M2 Pro models and I absolutely love it. As I spent more time with it, I decided I think I want a piece of the new MBP line.
During the course of my initial belaboring of the options (primarily: 14 vs 16, M2 Pro vs Max) and the fact that I’m a manchild who doesn’t want to wait 3 weeks for a more customized build, I’ve kind of landed on the default configurations for the M2 Max in both 14 and 16 inch - this would allow me to simply pay for the thing online with my Apple card, get my monthly installments, and just leave the house and go push through the throngs of people at the Apple store to pick it up near instantly. I popped by an Apple store y esterday just to get some face-to-face time with a 16 inch to decide if I could stomach the size.
I have an old ThinkPad X1 Big Dong Xtreme Edition or whatever ridiculous marketing name it had and that thing is 17" and a bit too… I dont know. It feels like a lunch tray in the lap and it could heat a 2k sq. ft. house when it really gets going. If I had used it extensively (I didn’t) the heat probably would have sterilized me and cooked my legs with enough time.
But that doesn’t mean I’m 200% AGAINST a 16" MBP, just that a 14" would be somewhat preferable. The concerns I’m seeing about overheating and throttling of an M2 Max in the 14" form factor are somewhat concerning, but as I dig deeper, there seem to be two camps here. One who says they will NEVER buy a laptop where there is ANY compromise involved (which is frankly kind of silly) and they go on to really bash the 14" heating/throttling issue, and another - seemingly more sensible - camp that states that overheating and throttling is something that the vast majority of even professional users likely won’t experience often - if at all. They say that the benchmarks being run are putting excessive, incredible load on these chips that will rarely - if ever - be seen in anything but the most absolutely demanding use cases… which I understand is how benchmarks often work.
For the record, my intended uses for the laptop will be primarily writing code (mostly Python, maybe some Golang) and music production, primarily in FL Studio (post v20, where they added support for Apple Silicon - VSTs I like to use might be another issue here entirely in that regard, but I’m emotionally prepared for that fight).
So what’s the deal? Should I say “fuck it” and spring for the 16" with the Max chip? Or does the 14" sound fine for my uses/are the complaints totally overblown?
EDIT: I think I’m calling it here. The 14" Max model I’m looking at is $3099. If I was to take the Pro build and bump it to 32GB RAM, the price difference becomes only $200 - a difference I can stomach for the convenience of getting it as soon as I drag my lazy ass out of the chair and drive to the Apple store for same-day pickup. Everyone’s feedback is HIGHLY appreciated.
I’ve never personally used the machine you’re referring to, but unless you’re doing long video renders it likely won’t matter. Programming takes very little resources, even when using a debugger, compared to the torture tests reviewers use. Any heavy load comes in bursts of compiling/interpreting which also don’t hit the machine anywhere close to as hard. Music production might be a bit more strenuous, but still well within the area of not having issues.
I’d say stick with the 14" if that’s what you prefer. It’s not designed to render videos 24/7, but even if you did that it’s still pretty damn fast even when throttling.
I think music production is really more about the processor itself and the available memory (I don’t bounce SHIT to audio because there’s always room for last minute tweaks to the 20 synthesizer patches I have open at one time lol) - so from what I’m seeing, you might be right. Now its a matter of deciding to splurge a bit and going with the Max which I can go pick up any time or being a patient person and ordering a Pro with 32GB.
The Max would be major overkill, and might actually be worse for you because of the worse battery life to drive the higher power draw chip. My personal laptop is a 16" M1 Pro MBP and I’ve never had it hitch on me. My work laptop is a similar spec 14" and I regularly run a dozen of programs at once (Outlook, Slack, Chime, dozens of Firefox tabs, Music, and 3 to 4 IntelliJ instances) without issue. Occasionally it does get a little warm when I’m doing 30+ minute builds, but that is akin to many torture tests reviewers use.